Tuesday, October 29, 2013

Crazy wisdom (yeshe cholba) is a concept in Tibetan
Buddhism asserting that a teacher may have reached a level of development
whereby his/herbehaviourappears highly unconventional or even immoral
to others and that he/shemayuse such behaviour to jolt or shock their
disciplesinto higher states of
spirituality. Something like this has existed in several religions;being a fool for Christ as described in the
Bible (1 Corinthians 1.18; 3,19; 4.10) and theclownish but wise figure ofChee
Kong in the Chinese Buddhist/Taoist tradition would be examples of this. There
are even suggestions of something approaching it in Tipitaka. Verse 501 of the
Theragatha says “Let one with sight be as though blind, and one who hears be as
though deaf, let one with tongue be as though dumb, let one who is strong be as
though weak.” The Buddha said that if you do not retaliate to another person’s
anger, those who do not appreciate the Dhamma will think you are a bala, i.e. a fool (S.I,162).

However, the individual whose
innocent and simple holiness is misunderstood and mocked by the majority is one
thing, the articulateworldly-wise
teacher who cleverly explains and justifies hisunconventionalor wreakless
behaviour another altogether. The most
well-known exponent of crazy wisdom in recent times was Chogyam Trungpa. While
Trungpa was clearly a dynamic and brilliant individual he made a terrible mess
of his ownlife with his abusive sexual
behaviour, drug taking and alcoholism, and caused a great deal of distress to
others.

The idea of crazy wisdom
presentsseveral serious problems as far
as Buddhism is concerned. It renders indistinct the boundary between morality
and immorality. It raises the suspicion that those who indulge in it are not
really wise but are just trying to rationalizing or excuse behaviour that in
other context would be unacceptable, immoral or even illegal. It leads to
hypocrisy in that crazy wisdom proponents such as Trungpa insist that their
students should not emulate their behaviour. In Trungpa’s case, at one point,
when his alcoholism became really serious, he admitted himself into a rehab
clinic to dry out and recover. Significantly, he did not apply to himself all
the supposedly profound meditational and psychological techniques that he had
been teaching to others. Surely this alone has to raise some doubts about the
legitimacy of crazy wisdom.

But for me the most serious
problem with the concept of crazy wisdom is its dependence on the assumption
that the teacher is ipso facto
enlightened or at least highly developed. This assumption depends entirely on
the acceptance of certain beliefs; e.g. in the Tibetan tradition that the
teacher is supposedly the reincarnation of a great teacher of the past, in
India on the traditional assertion that gurus have mystical powers and that
surrender to them is the key to spiritual advancement. Like all such
assumptions and assertions these ones are not open to critical examination but
have to be taken on faith.

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

Several
bronze-made Gautama Buddha sculptures and some other artefacts, including an
ancient brick-built structure with a lotus-shaped inflorescence have been found
recently during an excavation at Jagaddala Budhha Bihar archaeological site, some
sixty five kilometers away from Naogaon in Bangladesh. Though many Buddhist monasteries
have been discovered in the country, all
of them were square or geometrical in shape, only this one is shaped like a
lotus inflorescence, said archaeologists.Mahbub
Ul Alam, one of the members of the excavation team and custodian of Paharpur Buddha Bihar
Archaeological Museum
said that some rare sculptures of Gautama Buddha were found, including some
ancient brick, granite and black stone built structures and four cells of
Buddhist monastery have been found in an excavation at Jagaddala Bihar
recently. “They also found precious stones, ornamental stone pieces,
ancient brick staircases and broken earthen pots”, he said. The structure was
built in the 10th or 11thcenturies during Pala dynasty. “The locals had
their doubts about the authenticity of the Jagaddala Bihar. We are now sure
that this is the original Jagaddala Vihara”, he said. He added, “It is a rare discovery for our
country.”Jagaddala Mahavihara was a Buddhist monastery
founded by the later kings of the Pala dynasty, possibly Rampala (1077-1120),
most likely at a site near the present village
of Jagaddal in Dhamurhat Upazila in
the north-west Bangladesh on
the border of India,
near Paharpur.

Little
is known about Jagaddala compared with the other mahaviharas of the era such as
Nalanda. For many years, its site could not be ascertained. AKM Zakaria
inspected five likely locations, all called Jagddal or Jagadal, in the
Rajshahi-Malda region- namely Panchagarh, Haripur upazila in Thakurgaon,
Bochaganj upazila in Dinajpur, Dhamoirhat in Naogaon, and Bamongola of Malda in India. Of
these, significant ancient ruins were present only near Jagddal. Excavations
under UNESCO over the past decade have established the site as the once famous Buddhist monastery.

A
large number of monasteries were established in ancient Bengal and Magadha during the four centuries of Pala rule
in north-eastern India
(756-1174 AD). Dharampala (781 – 821) is said to have founded 50 viharas
himself, including Vikramshila, the premier university of the era. Jagaddala
was founded toward the end of the Pala dynasty, most likely by Ramapala
(1077-1120). According to Tibetan sources, five great mahaviharas stood out,
Vikramshila, Nalanda, Somapura, Odantapura and Jagaddala. The five monasteries
formed a network under state supervision. Jagaddala specialized in Vajrayana
Buddhism. A large number of texts that would later appear in the Kanjur and
Tenjur were known to have been composed or copied at Jagaddala. It is likely
that the earliest dated anthology of Sanskrit verse, the Subhasitaratnakosa,
was compiled by Vidyakara at Jagaddala toward the end of the 11thor the beginning of the 12th centuries. Sakyasribhadra, a
Kashmiri scholar who was the last abbot of Nalanda Mahavihara and instrumental
in transmitting Buddhism to Tibet,
is said to have fled to Tibet
in 1204 from Jagaddala when Muslim incursions seemed imminent. Historian
Sukumar Dutt tentatively placed the final destruction of Jagadala to 1207; in
any case it seems to have been the last mahavihara to be overrun.In 1999, Jagaddala was submitted as
a tentative site for inclusion on the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites.
UNESCO reported that the excavation has revealed an extensive mound, 105 meters
by 85 meters, which represents the archaeological remains of a Buddhist
monastery. The findings have included terracotta plaques, ornamental bricks,
nails, a gold ingot and three stone images of deities.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

In 1909 Lord Curzon wrote a tract called Fifteen Good Reasons Against The Grant Of
Female Suffrage. Curzon was a conservative man but he was no doddering aristocrat.
Far from it, he was a respected senior minister in the British government, Viceroy
of India for two terms, a writer and an explorer who had been awarded the Royal
Geographic Society’s gold medal for his discovery of the source of the Oxus. The opinions he expressed in his tract were shared
by the majority of educated men, and many women too, at the beginning on the 20th
century. Nineteen years later the Representation
of the People Act (1928) gave all women the vote. One wonders what the
arguments being used against same-sex marriage, curiously similar to Curzon’s, will
sound like to our ears nineteen years from now. “Traditional values” are
amorphous things and they can have a very brief shelf life. Reason 1. “Political activity will tend to take women
away from her proper sphere and highest duty, which is maternity.” Reason II.
“It will tend by the divisions it will
introduce to break up the harmony of the home.” In other word, allowing women
to vote will lead to the breakdown of the family. Reason III. “The grant of the
vote to women cannot possibility stop short at a restricted franchise on the basis of a
property or other qualification…Its extension to them would pave the way to
Adult Suffrage. There is no permanent or practical halting-stage before.” At present
only people earning a certain level of income and owning property valued above a certain amount can vote. If we enfranchise women everyone will
start demanding it - labourers, tradesmen, farmers, etc. It is a slippery slope. Reason IV. “Women have
not, as a sex or a class, the calmness
of temperament or thebalance of mind,
nor have they the training necessary, to qualify them to exercise a weighty judgement
in political affairs.” Woman are psychologically unsuitable to be given this responsibility.
Reason VIII. “The presence of a large number of females in the constituencies
returning a British government to power would tend to weaken Great Britain
in the estimation of foreign powers. Reason IX. “It would be gravely
misunderstood and become a source of weakness in India.” In short, if women were given the vote it will weaken the social and political order and perhaps
even threaten the Empire. Reason X. “The
vote once given, it would be impossible to stop at this. Women would then
demand the right to become MP’s, Cabinet Ministers, Judges, etc. Nor could the
demand be logically stopped.” It will open the floodgates for them to demand
other even more undesirable rights. Reason XIV. “The intellectual emancipation
of women is proceeding, and will continue to do so, without the enjoyment of
political franchise. There is no necessary connection between the two.” Don’t they
already have enough?Reason XV.“No precedent exists for giving women as a
class an active share in the government of a great country or empire, and it is
not for Great Britain, whose stake is the greatest, and in whose case the
result of failure would be the most tremendous, to make the experiment.” There
is no precedent for this move and we have no idea what the consequences of it
will be.

Monday, October 7, 2013

Friday, October 4, 2013

The parable
of the blind men and the elephant is probably the most widely known and the
most loved of all the world's parables. By far the earliest version ofit is to be found in the Udana, one of the
books of the Buddhist scriptures where it is attributed to the Buddha
(Ud.67-9). There seems no good reason to doubt this attribution, for while the
blind men and the elephant is a most memorable one, it is by no means the only
cleaver parable attributed to the Buddha. The parable’sappeal is due to how well it makes its point,
its striking juxtaposing of man and beast and its gentle humor.

The
background to the Buddha telling this parable goes like this. Some monks in
Savatthi noticed a group of non-Buddhist monks
quarrelling with each other about some philosophical or theological issues.
Later, they mentioned what they had seen to the Buddha and he said:“Wanderers of other sects are blind and
unseeing. They don’t know the good and the bad and they don’t know the true and
the false. Consequently they are always quarrelling, arguing and fighting, wounding
each other with the weapon of the tongue.”Then the Buddha related his famous parable.“Once here in Savatthi, the king called a
certain man and said‘Assemble together
in one place all the men in Savatthi who were born blind.’Having done as the king commanded, the king
then said to the man ‘Now show the blind men an elephant.’ Again the man did as
the king commanded, saying to each as he did‘Oh blind man, this is an elephant and this is its head. This is its
ear. This is its tusk. This is its trunk. This is its body. This is its leg.
This is its back. This is its tail. This is the end of its tail.’ This having
been done the king addresses the blind men saying ‘Have you seen an
elephant?’and they replied‘We have sire.’ ‘And what is an elephant
like?’he asked. And the one who had
touched the head said ‘An elephant is like a pot.’while the one who had touched the ear said
‘An elephant is like a winnowing basket.’The one who had touched the tusk said ‘An elephant is like a plough pole’
while the one who had touched the trunk said‘It is like a plough.’The one who had touched the body said ‘It is
like a granary’ and the one who had
touched the leg said ‘It is like a pillar.’ The one who had touched the back
said ‘It is like a mortar’,the one who had touched the tail said ‘It is
like a pestle’ while the one who had
touched the end of the tail said ‘An elephant is like a broom.’ Then they began to quarrel saying ‘Yes it is!’No it isn’t! An elephant is like this!’‘An elephant is like that!’, until eventually they began fighting with each
other.” Having told this story the Buddha summed up its meaning in a terse
little verse -“Some monks and priests are attached to their views
And having seized hold of them they wrangle, like those who see only one side
of a thing.” The key to understanding the meaning of the parable is in the last
line of this verse; seeing only one side of a thing (ekanga dassino).
This is but one example of where the Buddha gives advice about how to form a
more complete, a more accurate view of reality. Here he is suggesting one
important point - that we should not mistake the part for the whole. In other
places he advises keeping personal biases out of the way when assessing views,
taking time to form opinions and even when having done so, keeping an open mind
so as to be able to consider fresh evidence to the contrary.I notice that the Wikipedia article on this
famous parable says that the blind men touch eight pachyderm parts while K. N.
Jayatilleke (usually a very careful scholar) says there are ten. In fact, there
are nine. I really delight in the Buddha’scomparisons. You can see women using
winnowing baskets (sup or supli in Hindi, suppa in
Pali) is any Bihari village even today and they are shaped just like an elephant's ear. The elephant’s tail
and the broom is a good comparison too. The back with the pestle is less
obvious. Could it be referring to the long ridge of the backbone which can so
easily be seen under the elephant’s skin? After the Udana, the earliest mention
of the parable of the blind men and the elephant is to be found in the Syadvadamanjari,
a Jain work where it is used to illustrate the Jain doctrine of relativity of
truth (anekantavada). This doctrine states that “every view is true from some standpoint (naya)
or other and in general no view can be categorically false.” Boy! Wouldn’t New
Agers love this one if they knew of it! After this the blind men and their
elephant wandered all over the place.
They appear in Brahmanical and Hindu works, in some Persian collections of
stories and even in one of the works of the Persian Sufi mystic Rumi. Today
there are numerous children’sbooks
about it or which include it. If you would like to see a careful and accurate
word by word translation of the whole sutta in which the parable of the blind
men and the elephant appears have a look at Venerable Anandajoti’s www.ancient-buddhist-texts.net/Texts-and-Translations/Udana/6-Jaccandhavaggo-04.htm

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Just yesterday someone described
themselves to me as a non-practicing Buddhist. I cannot say that I have heard
this term used before and I found it a rather strange one. Strange because it
implied that beingBuddhist is an
identity apart from practicing and trying to live by the Dhamma. It makes sense
to call yourself a non-practicingJew
because Judaism is to a large sense a culture and an ethnicity as much as a
religion, so you can have one without the other. I have heard people describe
themselves or someone else as a non-practicing or lapsed Catholic. This makes
sense too given that Catholicism is so all-embracing that it imparts an
identity beyond one’s specific culture, race and so on. But a non-practicing
Buddhist?

To me this makes no more sense
than it would be to describe oneself as a non-practicing athlete. “I have never
competed in any athletics, I do not have an athlete’s build and I have no
interest in or knowledge of athletes, so I’m a non-practicing athlete.” An
athlete is legitimately and properly called such by his or her doing of
athletics. And equally it makes no sense todescribe oneself as a non-practicing Buddhist. You either practice or genuinely
try to practice the Dhamma and accept its main philosophical propositions or
you do not. If you do you are a Buddhist, and if you do not you are not. You
can be a former Buddhist, you can be a bad Buddhist (a far from endangered
species)but you cannot be a
non-practicing Buddhist.

About Me

I am not the 5th or 9th reincarnation of a great lama, I have not recived any empowerments or initiations, I am not the holder of any lineage, I am yet to attain any of the jhanas, I am not a widely respected teacher, I am not a stream enterer (at least I don't feel like one)and I do not have many disciples. Nontheless, you may find some of my observations and musings interesting. I have been a Buddhist monk for 32 years and am the spiritual advisor to the Buddha Dhamma Mandala Society in Singapore.